259. One year in: lessons from my first year as a full-time coach, with Jeremy Cline. Change Work Life X Truth, Lies and Work

32:31I'm going to draw people's dogs and paint them and send them off. Okay, lovely. Brilliant. Is that an expensive and painful problem that people have? No, it's probably more like a nice to have. You can make some all right money from it, but that's not expensive, painful. Whereas you think about, in fact, your private wealth, you know, the high net worth individuals that you were dealing with in your previous life and potentially some of your clients do now. Their expensive potential problems are tax, are, you know, I've got a problem with a lease, I've got a problem. That's an expensive, painful problem.

33:02And so that's where the real money is. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should go out there and say, right, I'm going to create, I'm going to go and build a business that's going to make lots and lots of money. That's fine if you don't want to, absolutely fine. But the easiest and quickest way to get yourself to 10 grand a month is to be a the expert in one specific problem now what painful expensive problem now where I suppose I brought something to the table a little bit was that I am genuinely interested in business and in offers and in niches so where some people would sit on a Saturday afternoon and watch football I like football but I wouldn't go on to Twitter then and start conversations and you know i go well you know who's gonna play who's gonna win and what's this i see i tell i can't return know much about football what i do do on a saturday afternoon and almost every single day probably spend an hour on twitter looking at what people are doing following certain people and going i wonder what they're doing next listening to their or reading their take on things so i get exposed to probably 10 to 20 different business ideas a day and some of them i'll follow them down a little rabbit hole and go i wonder how they make money from that i wonder how they actually generate leads for that try and think how would i do that and then when it came to your specific situation i knew there was something called hampton which is by a guy called sam par he's one half of my first million uh podcast another podcast on the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals but it is actually a genuinely good good podcast and they're two interesting guys who are doing interesting things and so i happened to know about him doing the hampton thing looked at his website tried to work out how he was doing it and then when you were explaining what you wanted to what you potentially your ikigai was i was like oh well that sounds like Hamptons but for this and that is such a such a great thought process for anyone who's looking to get into to start their own gig or perhaps niche down a bit more is go can you be the x for y can you be the Netflix for lawyers can you be the Hamptons which is a private members club for badminton players you know and so if you can get that then you already have this structure you already know that hamptons first of all exists but secondly is very expensive thirdly is obviously well i say obviously very very very um successful i'm guessing it is because it's 25 grand for each person to join and i think they've got about a 200 or 300 members so i'm guessing that's a you know a fair seven-figure business so by using patterns of what people have already done that's such a great way to kind of like hone what it is that you're actually going to do so be the x for y and i think that is such a good starting point does that make sense that sound like from your point of view was that that sound like it was what i was doing or was i doing something different that does completely make sense i think the fact that you were aware of hamptons this organization where they get together small groups of entrepreneurs business owners and you identified that as being kind of adjacent to something that would fit for me.

36:07I mean, that was a massive breakthrough moment and we'll come on to that. There's something I wanted to pick up earlier. It was a concept which you introduced to me, which you touched on there, the difference between painkillers and vitamins. Vitamins are the, yeah, they're nice to have, you probably should do them you're not likely to see the effects of them in any short time frame versus the i have a problem i need this solving now help i don't really care what it costs just make this problem go away and trying to focus more on that side of things the painkiller the side of things rather than the nice to have sort of thing.

36:55So that was a really valuable thought process. I think where I thought the sort of ikigai process was valuable was the risk of starting something which solved a problem, but then it turned out that you just didn't enjoy solving that problem in a particular way. And this was something I did have firsthand experience of, because during the early days of the COVID pandemic, I had identified that one of the hot topics for podcasters was producing transcripts. And the options were either you got a human transcriptionist, which was quite expensive, or you got an AI transcription, which was a lot cheaper and also gave you something which wasn't terribly readable.

37:57It wasn't something that you could easily publish by itself. And me being the perfectionist I was when I started my podcast, I kind of did a mix of the two. So I got an AI to generate my transcripts and then I paid a VA to go through them and to basically turn them into proper English. And I realized that that was scalable, that I had a system which I could then get other people to pay for. And I started to do the maths. I figured, well, if I pay my VA X amount for a transcript and I'll get X number of podcasters and I can't know what the numbers came up with, but I figured out how I could monetize it and turn it into a business itself.

38:51And I started to offer a few freebies and then I got one or two paying clients and I did this, but I realized pretty early on that I just wasn't enjoying it. I didn't know why, At least I didn't really know why until I got some coaching which went through things like my own personal values. And I realized that whilst the idea was good, and I think probably still is quite a good idea, it didn't fit with me. So I think that's kind of like the one lesson that I had in my mind was that there's something around it not necessarily just being enough to solve a problem. MJ DeMarco, Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted.

39:39He says how he could drive down the motorway and see five problems which are all potential business ideas, which is great. But what I learned from that episode of offering this transcription service was that it wasn't enough just to solve a problem. It had to be something that I actually quite enjoyed solving. Yeah, interested in your take on that. okay so you're now going to meet for the second or third time only mean uncle al because i am going to be mean to you and say it is not your business to enjoy your business for the till you get to 100 grand a year 200 grand a year 300 grand a year it's a bonus if you enjoy it but you've got to put your own gas mask on first if you have a when most people have a runway and when I say runway it's the it's the the nerdy talk for you've got this amount of money to last you and when that's gone that's gone so most businesses have that most people who start a business they go right I've got a year to get this to work and then I think a lot of people will spend the first three or four months going well I really like painting so I wonder if I could do a painting thing maybe I could do painting workshops and it's like your business it's none of your business will you enjoy your business until you get to a point where your gas mask your air mask what do I mean, you know, in the planes, you put your oxygen mask is on then.

41:01All right. You're getting 10 grand a month coming in. That's enough for you to live. Now you can go and enjoy. And I think that a lot of people, they leave a job they don't like. Not saying you did this because I know it's slightly different with you, but they leave a job you don't, they don't like and go, right. I just want to wake up in the morning and just love my life and get excited about it. And I love making clay pots. So that's what I'm going to do. I tell you what, when you have to make 20 clay pots a week and you are behind and you have to work on Friday night to make your clay pot to get them delivered for Saturday morning because you ran out of time because something happened with your cat and you had taken to the vet or whatever, then you're not going to enjoy making pots anymore.

41:42So I think there's, again, still being mean Uncle Al, it's not always about doing what you enjoy because if you do that for a business, it'll soon become something you don't necessarily enjoy and you could ruin it for yourself. So I think the mean advice is till you get that six figures in the bank or whatever your runway is or till you get to a point where you're making enough money so that you go, great, I can relax a bit. Systematize it so you don't have to do it. So like you did with your VA, great. You've got AI, you've got VA to polish it. You potentially could tighten up the lead gen system so that you're actually bringing in leads automatically from ads or whatever.

42:21Once you've got that in place, then you probably need to just, you know, it's like, you know, you just need to go over and have a look at it once every week and look at the metrics and go, yeah, yeah, everything's within the agreed or the expected numbers. Great. Leave that go. And now you can go off and do what you want to do. Now, I think you are fortunate in that what we found is an expensive and painful problem is something you actually really enjoy doing and I think you're very fortunate and you've engineered it that way but just being really frank for those people out there who are listening and going I'm gonna leave my job and I'm gonna love my day you know I know that most days consist of extreme highs of this is working to extreme lows of going oh my god I can't do this and that doesn't matter whether you've been in business for 10 years whether you're a deca millionaire whether you've made 100 grand you're still going to have those days.

43:14And so I think it's really important for people to go into it thinking it's not just going to be a beautiful existence where you can wake up and you can do what you love and then go to bed at night and make, you know, make money. Yes, some people are lucky to have that. But it's to start off with, your goal is to have enough cash coming in so that you can go and spend three days a week playing with another idea. And that's where your painkiller of vitamins come in your first business should be a painkiller it should be solving a very expensive and painful problem for a lot of money get that sorted then you can play around with vitamins you can say i wonder wonder whether the ultra wealthy would pay for you know modern art of their dogs that's a cool idea let's go and find out see if they'll pay 20 grand to get damien hearse to do a version of their dog or something cool but that's not your first business because that's a that's a vitamin did that sort of like i feel like okay i'm going to exit me now and go back into like normal l but is that harsh i think the thing i would be concerned about would be sustainability so when you say the like you know taking your hobby taking your passion and making a business out of that i completely agree with what you say there you know i'm i'm an amateur musician, the idea of doing that to a professional level where I have to do it, where the pressure is on and all that kind of thing, absolutely no way.

44:44There's no way I would do that. It's a hobby. It's something I do on the side. It opens up a different part of my brain. So I agree that the first business needs to be a painkiller business, that it needs to solve a problem. So, where I feel like there could be a bit of nuance, interested to hear your viewpoint, is whether it's still got to be something, it's not a doing what you love, but it's kind of loving or at least enjoying what you do. So, I don't know, maybe you have identified that there is a real problem with, I don't know, clearing dog mess off the pavements, you know. And you have identified that people will actually pay you to do this.

45:41But you just, you know, you do it and you are miserable. You can feel your life draining away as you're doing it. Yeah, you're getting paid, but you're just, it's sucking the soul out of you, which was kind of, maybe I didn't give it long enough, but it was kind of how I felt with the transcription side. It solved a problem, but it didn't excite me at the same time. And so I don't think that I would have had the drive to keep it going because it was, yes, the money part absolutely was important, but it was just demotivating. Whereas we'll come on to talk about sort of what my idea looks like now.

46:28It is something that as well as hopefully solving a painful, expensive problem, it's also something which lights me up, which makes me go, yeah, and I think I'm going to be good at this. And I think I'm going to enjoy this. And who knows, maybe that's not realistic, but I just, yeah, I worry that just doing something because you know that there's a problem you can solve, if it doesn't engage you, then it's just going to be really, really hard and quite soul-sucking to do it. Over to you. Am I being too nice? No, that's a really, really good point and a good elaboration on my point. So dog muck off the pavements.

47:10yes that's a great example of something which you wouldn't enjoy doing i think that you if you're going to create if you're going to solve an expensive painful problem then you first of all have to have respect for the person you're solving it for so if you are you know socialist and you're like nope labor this is what i voted i don't believe in extreme wealth and then you try and start a business to help the ultra wealthy that's not going to work because it goes against your belief so you're not going to enjoy that so you've got to have respect for the person that the person who you're solving the problem for and you've got to be you've got to at least tolerate to enjoy like on that scale of a scale of hate to love tolerate in the middle you've got to be definitely right of the tolerate because it's got to be something that you actually enjoy doing if i think there's this two times like there's several ways that people approach starting a venture a gig a business whatever and i think a lot of people go right i need to do something that I'm going to enjoy because I'll be doing this for, you know, the foreseeable future.

48:10Cool. What they're starting is a lifestyle business where they are essentially doing somewhere between 50 and 100 % of the work and they want to enjoy their day. Cool. Then there are other people who look and say, right, I'm going to start a business, but it's a mechanism. It's like investing. I invest in property in the UK property. I've got a few houses. I don't, some of those houses I haven't been in for 15, 20 years. I don't care about the house. one of them burnt down i was like well how much is it going to cost me no one was hurt you know it's like but i see them as a box to make money whereas i think a lot of people would go in and certainly first or second time landlords if i can continue this this analogy for a second will go oh my god the tenants have left and they've wrecked that beautiful fireplace that me and my me and my partner built and how am i going to get it back to how it was you shouldn't put the fireplace in the first place because it was a box to make money so i think that there's two ways of looking at business are you if you're going to be like i'm going to be doing the work myself cool yes you're right you can't have something that you don't like you you'll probably won't like it some days and some days you'll love it or you look at it and go right i'm going to start a business to make money and this i'm going to create instead of a box to rent out i'm going to create a system that will that will turn one pound into four pounds or one dollar into four dollars and there's two different ways of looking at it and i think that it's really important to know what it is you're going to start a lifestyle business could evolve into a systematized business that's actually a thing, rarely would a systematized business revolve into a lifestyle business because you're actually looking at it from an investment point of view.

49:39So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that, yes, I think if you intend to be, I think they call it IC, individual contributors, is that the right term? If you intend to be the deliverer of the service, then yes, you're right. You definitely need to be certainly near the, I love this side of it. what the podcast transcription you had an ai you had a va to do it you had ai did the basis of it and i don't think it's an expensive painful problem for podcasters because most podcasters don't have money but it could be like okay well i'm going to do it for the top five percent of podcasts who do make like 100 grand a year for them where a grand a month will be like oh yeah okay that's worth it because i'm going to get a really good transcription from it you could still start that business because you all you have to do is essentially put add one more customer a month So five phone calls, one of those will buy.

50:30That's five phone calls a month. Your VA takes care of everything else. Your AI takes care of everything. So that's a systematized business that you don't necessarily have to love, but it's bringing you in 10 grand a month. So I know I've come at this from a, probably an angle that we didn't expect or you might not have expected to go down. Because I do respect what you've done with the icky, what's the word again? Icky guy. I do respect what you've done that. And I think that's great. I just want to underline that you, people starting out in venture have got two choices and one of them is to do something which they're going to love and the other one is you don't necessarily have to do it you don't necessarily have to love making sandwiches but you could easily go and get a subway franchise and make yourself a nice bit of money which will allow you to spend time doing the stuff you do love back to you yeah and this is something that i've kind of reflected on the difference between lifestyle business and sort of scalable you're not working in the business you're working on the business kind of thing.

51:28And I wonder whether it is helpful if you are someone who will enjoy creating a scalable business. So, you know, there are people who, it kind of doesn't really matter what the business is. They want to figure out the way of scaling it and systematizing it and eventually selling it. And it could be turning one small sandwich shop into a franchise or it could be you know manufacturing widgets or it could be goodness knows what and it's just it's that you know it's that it's the process of of doing that of understanding the business so i wonder whether there's if you're going to do that kind of thing then it helps to have a propensity to want to do that to to be excited by that because I'm conscious that if what I'm working on does take off then it could scale.

52:29It absolutely could scale. I could see a path to that but at least for the first couple of years it is likely to be more of a lifestyle thing where I am doing most of it myself and having believed what I'd read that oh no you've got to scale it, you've got to take yourself out of the business you know almost lifestyle business bad i've kind of come around to the thinking well as long as it works and i'm enjoying what i'm doing in it i'm kind of okay with that for the time being and see see where it goes so that's i think that's a really really important distinction to think about why are you starting a a business and if you are a 22 year old and you don't mind working 20 hours a day, because you've got the energy to work 20 hours a day, and all you want to do is be a millionaire by the time you're 30, then that's a different business to when you are perhaps our age.

53:26And you're like, well, I don't either don't have or don't want to spend, you know, most of my time on this. Cool. And I think that if you watch Dragon's Den, a lot of you'll have this idea that a lifestyle business is a bad thing. You know, quite often they'll go, well, this is just a lifestyle business, you know, and it's like, fine, because that's beautiful. If you want a lifestyle business, that's your business, have it. I think they are very much looking and going, the whole idea of me getting room boxes that I can rent out, that's the way they look at businesses. How do I turn my£1 into£4?

53:58Or in Levi Root's case, my£1 into£400? They've got a different way of looking at it. So Dragon's Den is fun to watch, but it's not something you should be emulating unless you are, you desperately want to make money or you desperately want to, not desperately, but you want to increase the cash you've got on hand. Fine. If that's that, go and start a systematized business. Most people want, certainly at our age, they want to start something which they're going to wake up and enjoy. And you've made that decision. And that's cool. And the reason why Mean Owl came out was because I wanted people to hear that you don't always have to love what you do if your priority is to make money.

54:36And the other thing is that if you are running out of runway, which I know you're not, but if you are running out of runway, you may need to do that. You may need to do something. I know there's a guy called Chris Cardell. He was maybe about 15 years ago. He's quite famous. He used to do all the online like workshops and stuff, marketing, et cetera. And when he started his business, he wanted to do workshops and sell media. He's one of the OGs of the selling content. He wanted to do that. But what he did was he did consultancy on the side for companies he didn't really want to do consultancy for because that paid the bills to allow him to work at evenings on the other thing and i just want i think i want people to your listeners to understand that it's not all you don't very few people say i'm going to start a business and then in month three they're going it's going really well i made 100 grand this year most people spend the first 12 months making no money and that's when they give up because they have to or they don't see a route to it just do something on the side to make money you'll put that oxygen mask on first the foot the most important thing for you is to have as much runway as you need because let's be honest a lot of people don't necessarily want to be rich they just want to be able to go to the cash machine and take 50 quid out whenever they want and what you just said there about the first 12 months you probably won't make any money i think that's something that people need to hear and i've heard somewhere that someone say that 18 months is probably a good period of time than what you're looking like before you're going to be making any money.

56:07And you can find lots of stories around social media of people who have managed to shorten that time period, but they're probably going to be the exceptions. That's why there's a story around them. So, you know, XYZ had nothing and then three months later he was making his first million. That's unusual. On the one hand, okay, someone has done it, so why can't you? Well, yes, and they are probably still an outlier. And so whilst it might work out that way for you, chances are it won't. And so it's kind of tinging this idealism with a pretty healthy slug of reality as well. Exactly. They are noteworthy because they are, as you say, the outlier.

56:56And I think that the other part of that, which is quite damaging really, is that if you go on Twitter, you see, particularly if you get, you know, the algorithm starts serving stuff up that I see, then you'll see like, oh, I made 10 grand this month and I started it last month and it's an AI rapper and it was brilliant. And you go, yeah, cool. But what you haven't seen is there's a great guy called Mark Lovino, he's a French guy. and what you don't see is the nine other ai rappers they started over the last five years that made absolutely nothing and so i think the first lesson is you're right don't take everything at face value if it's noteworthy because they made money then it's noteworthy for a reason it's newsworthy because it's the it's the outlier secondly you don't understand what's gone on the the sort of the 10-year overnight success most people who are successful have been at it for 10 years i was bankrupt i lost i lost everything i got my car repossessed and i had two houses repossessed when I went bankrupt back in 2005.

57:54And then 2007, that's when I started, that's when my second or third business went really well, which is in the property and built some wealth. But had you seen me in 2005, not being able to pay my rent, having no car, having to get the bus everywhere because my car had been repossessed, that would have been a different story. And then if you'd just taken, oh, well, he got into property at the right time in 2006. And look, he built X amount in 18 months. Yes, we did. But that's because I got bankrupt. That's because I got repossessed because I entered the repossession. I also started two other businesses before that.

58:27They didn't work either. So really, the journey was from like 2000, 2006. Rubbish, really bad, negative bank balance. 2006, 2000 and mid 2007. Very nice. Thank you very much. But don't judge me based on those 18 months, 19 months, based on the entire eight year period. Yeah, completely. I feel like I went off on a rant there. We need to pull this back to you because I started to work myself. No, I think that was a really valuable diversion. I think it's something that people will benefit from hearing. I think it's something that I probably need to remember more often than I don't. So I think that was a world-world tangent to dive into.

59:15Let's talk about research and development. because we had had this thing. So you had said, there's this thing called Hampton. You could do something similar in the private wealth space. And I still had some doubts about whether it was going to be a painkiller rather than a vitamin. You know, oh yeah, this private member's club. It kind of sounds nice without necessarily solving a problem. And I also knew enough about business at that point that build it and they will come does not work. You need to do a lot more sort of research on figuring out what you are going to offer. So, yes, do you want to talk a little bit more about, you know, we'd had this conversation about, okay, this is a possibility.

1:00:05Next step to finding out whether or not it or indeed something else is the thing which effectively becomes my first offer. Yes, and this is something I get really passionate about and really excited about. And the reason, one of the key things that I tried to get across early on, and you picked up on straight away, was that what we're doing here is we are testing hypotheses. What's the plural of hypotheses? Hypothesis? I don't know. So you're testing hypotheses here. So what we don't want to do is come and say, right, my beautiful business idea, I want you to sign an NDA before I even tell you it, and it's going to be brilliant.

1:00:41and you go out and you go, right, and now let's launch it. And then nobody comes because then you've got your ego wrapped up and all your dreams and everything wrapped up in this beautiful business. Instead, we treat it like a lab, you and I. We were like, okay, we've got a lab. Hypothesis is that people in the private wealth space, this isn't necessarily the clients, this is just the people who work there. So we're talking accountants, we're talking tax advisors, that kind of thing, estate managers. our hypothesis was that those people would want to meet regularly and again we're not don't forget we're not putting like a monthly or weekly or quarterly we're just saying regularly with other people in their industry so that they can chat through their problems potentially network and they're going to pay for it and that was our hypothesis and it kind of like had four sort of elements will they pay for it do they want to even do it i forget the other two were but there was there was essentially parts to it that we were ticking off and our idea was that we're going to go out and try this and if it doesn't work then one of those one or all of those things are off so it might be that people want this they need it they love it but they're not willing to pay for it okay so that's still a decent idea but is there some kind of can you look at it from a different point of view oh i wonder if we could get it sponsored by someone would that be interesting a Barclays Wealth Manager, would they sponsor your events for you?

1:02:07So you start thinking a bit outside your box, as opposed to having this concrete idea going, well, it's got to work because I've now got all the business cards printed. I've done the website for it. I think that's an important thing to remember, actually. At this point, am I right in thinking at this point when we're going out there and we're actually testing the hypothesis, you had no website, no business cards, nothing, no business plan for this. Is that right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I'd say the exercise that I did next was, it was almost, it was kind of part of testing the hypothesis, but it was almost like the bit before even testing the hypothesis.

1:02:45so what what you had me do essentially what i did was arrange lots of conversations with people who i knew in the sector so old colleagues old contacts that kind of thing and i did mention the idea but i didn't mention it first so i planned the sorts of conversations i was going to have these sorts of informational interviews. And originally I was going to say, look, I've got this idea and I'd like to talk you through it. You know, what do you like about this idea? What don't you like about this idea? What would you need to see to make this a no brainer for you? That kind of thing. But it was actually from one of my mastermind groups when I mentioned the idea to them, they said, well, what about making that the second part of the conversation?

1:03:38Why don't you in the first part of the conversation, just open with some really broad questions like, what are the biggest challenges that you face in your job? Start out with that. So don't go in with any presupposition about where you want to lead people. It was really hard for me because even by that stage, I was quite invested in the idea. I really liked it, but I could feel myself just I had to pull myself back and ask these open, non-leading questions to find out what people thought. And then if the responses to that made me think, okay, they could be interested in them, then bring in the idea and ask them what they thought of it.

1:04:27And I'm so glad that I did it that way. One, because it meant that people were just really open about answering my questions and saying what the biggest challenges were. Side note here, I was pleasantly surprised about how open people were. I mean, there were plenty of people who either didn't respond to my email requesting a conversation or who said no, but there were a lot of people who said yes. And And for the most part, they were very open and frank and honest about what were the difficult bits in their job, which was all incredibly valuable. And it also effectively wrote my copy for me. I mean, I could just, there were regular themes which came out, which I could then draw out when it came to putting a document together, explaining what the offering was.

1:05:27So I did that first and then it was in the second part of the conversation where I said, look, this is an idea I've got. What do you think of it? And I made sure that it was framed in terms of this is an idea I'm asking for your advice on the idea. I don't actually have anything to sell. and the conversation was, can I keep you posted on how things go? And then that would help inform me whether it would be someone who I would follow up with later if they thought it sounded interesting. There were a few people who said, I think it's a great idea, but for me, I can't imagine doing anything worse than going into these groups and sharing my problems with them, whereas other people were like, yeah, this is a neat idea.

1:06:10And I don't think that anything exists like this already. So yeah, no, do keep me posted. But I remember after I did that, you and I had a conversation where I was still doubtful about whether the idea, you know, having this offering where I offer to facilitate these groups together, whether that was sort of still a painkiller, whether it was actually solving these particular problems for people. And then that was when I think you said, look, Jeremy, this is a science experiment. You're the scientist here. Your job. Now you've got this. Now you've got a really good understanding about what people's pain points are.

1:06:53And we did some work on turning that into effectively a sales document. Now it's your job to go out there and see whether on the back of the conversations you've had with people, this is something that someone is willing to pay for. Yes. And I think what was really impressed me by this, because I was being really honest, I was skeptical whether you're actually going to do this because it was painful. And I could see it in your face when I was saying you need to go out there and talk to people. You're a bit like, oh, is there not another way? Can I not just ask chat GPT or can I just email them or send them a survey or something?

1:07:27but to your credit like you you sent me a message i think two weeks after going right okay or maybe even two days afterwards saying right okay i've emailed 40 people i've got 30 calls booked i'm like that's brilliant mate that's absolutely brilliant and i didn't think that you would do as much of it as as you did and you did and it was phenomenal i think this is the most important thing that you need to do the sort of like i've just made up an idea of the three stages of business where you start off with the scientist and that's the bit you're doing now so that's working out hypotheses testing hypotheses with the market then you become the artist that's when you actually create your offer and you take it to market and you design all that what is going to look like you design the whole thing then there's capitalist and that's the bit where you you essentially say can i put one pound in this and get four pound out and those sort of like your three stages which sounds to me like i should write a book on this called called the sac method or something in self-coaching or whatever anyway i i jest obviously what you were talking about there with the scientist phase was something based on the book called the mom test mom because it's american i forget who it was by definitely definitely worth reading and he's he's talking about when he's creating software and he says if you go to your mom and you say i've got a great idea for this piece of software what do you think she's gonna go oh i love that sounds brilliant yeah yeah i'll bet you'll be a millionaire from that and if you go to your friends and you ask them what do you think about this piece of software they're gonna say the same thing because they want to support you what you did was what he advocates which is go in there just have a conversation and say one of the best things you can do with software is say what are you currently using excel for that is really cumbersome because that on that uncovers so many niche software opportunities that could be built now with cursor ai with them uh wind wind i can't remember what's called.

1:09:17There's lots of them out there, Bolt. So you can uncover that. So what you did there was go out there and essentially say, what do you use Excel for? But in your world, you know, what are you doing manually? What are you, what's your biggest problem? What really annoys you? What's cumbersome? Now that's, that's from the mum test and it's definitely well worth reading for anyone who's listened to this. Stop now, pause, go and buy that if you're in this stage, because I think you're going to love it. Second book, which is a bit OG is by a guy called Ryan called ask and that one is more about surveys that's worth reading but he seems to suggest that all you have to do is send out a survey and you get all the responses and then you get essentially you can build your product it's not like that you need to have these one-to-one conversations that you had and i think first of all well done dude you did it you did the hard work you uncovered some problems secondly well done because you went in it not trying to validate an idea but more like trying to test a hypothesis with the with the idea that you will change it if it doesn't come back with the results which i think is cool and why you're on the roads to success so quickly as you are whereas most people would be like no i i think i think facebook for dogs is definitely we're going to call it dog book i've read you the domain which is great you know yeah and the idea of having these conversations it was one i was already aware of you know you and I are both aware of Pat Flynn's passive income and he was someone who is always saying that.

1:10:46And yeah, so I was kind of aware of the idea, but again, it was one of these things, okay, yes, all right, I need to do it now. And you're right, I was terrified of the idea. It's one of these things where it felt really uncomfortable and it probably took me two days to send the first email just because I just met this massive resistance. Maybe draft the email and it's like, oh no, let's just see what's going on on Twitter or whatever it is. But something that I've learned is that when I break the seal on it, so to speak, it kind of gets its own momentum and you realize that it's not that scary, especially when people come back to you and say, yeah, sure.

1:11:29And it kind of generates a bit of a flywheel. And I'm sure I found this in loads of situations. So like when I started the podcast, those first few emails to people saying, would you like to be a guest? It just feels really difficult and you start questioning it. Who am I to ask this person to be a guest or to have a conversation? But I think like anything, it just comes with practice. and the coaching, but the coach training that I did definitely helped because I know the value of asking open questions and making sure if someone says, oh, well, I don't like this idea because of this, I don't come back with a, you know, effectively in the nicest possible way saying, well, you know, you're wrong because, but asking them instead, okay, so what makes you say that and how would you answer that question?

1:12:21So that's valuable. But just being, doing it, just starting the process. And I'm starting to recognize those feelings of resistance. So I'm now at the stage where I'm having conversations with people to see whether they would like to participate in my offering. And when that started, again, I was meeting the same resistance, even more so because I wasn't just asking people for a conversation, but I was asking potential customers to pay me for something which is um really you know doing it when it's something for myself rather than in a business it just felt really really uncomfortable but i guess it's one of these things once if it's a muscle that you've never exercised before then yeah of course it feels well comfortable it's not surprising but the more you do it the more comfortable it starts to feel 100 i think we're going to go on to that the artist stage in my little um my new my new paradigm that i'm going to be copywriting before you put this out but um we're going to the artist in a second but just going back to the scientist thing there's a reason why most academics and most intelligent people are not good at starting businesses because they are so used to having all the answers and they're so used to being right and they hate someone saying no to them or they disagree whereas the people who still start businesses are the ones who don't care whether someone says yes or no because the fact is that most won't you see you see lots of people going well if i could just get four percent of the people who wear shoes to buy my to buy my shoes then god i'm gonna be a billionaire it's like most won't you're talking about 0.0001 percent of people you potentially get to buy your shoes unless you're nike or i did this or something you've got an established market.

1:14:09The basis of almost every business is foundational blocks built on the number of times they said no. So if you can imagine that you're building a house, the foundations of the house and most of the walls, well, every block represents a no. Because you have to, now, I'm slightly contributing to myself in a second, but I'll expand on that in a second. But when you ask, when you get to the point where asking people to meet up with you, the majority of people will say no. Not because they don't want to meet up with you, although that's true for some of them, but most of them because they've got so much in the day, they're like, I just haven't got the time, I can't be bothered.

1:14:44When you send out 100 emails, personalize those 100 emails, you might go, I've just spent two days personalizing these emails, so every single one of them is perfect. And you'll notice that probably 60 % of them don't even get a reply. They're probably not even opened. But the fact is, you've had to send out 100 to get 20 replies to get 10 calls. You've had to do that. You can't just send a better email to get those 20 calls and send 20 emails out. You have to go 100. So you start off with a, you know, 100 people you contact, 20 people reply, 10 of them get on a call with you, five say they'll buy, three will actually pay you some money.

1:15:24That's the universal way of human nature. It's the way that you sell anything. Even Apple. You think Apple, one of the most successful companies on the planet. yet overall in most countries they most people don't have apples apple phones most people have android you know so even the most valuable company in the world only has a 30 worldwide share of the smartphone market and you think god well apple they can do no wrong well seven out of ten people decide they don't want an apple phone so i think it's really important to understand that a lot of people sit there and go well if i write the perfect email then everyone will reply no you could write the perfect email and still 40 % of people will never even open it.

1:16:05Yeah. And I think one point that's worth adding to that is it's another Pat Flynnism where he says the riches are in the niches and the fortune is in the follow up. So you send an email, you don't get a reply. And then a week later you send a follow up, you know, just saying if you got that email, I'd love to have that conversation or something like that, something short. The number of times that that second email converted was quite telling that made me think, yes, it's worth doing. And there was part of me which was like, oh God, now I've got to chase him. Oh no, now I've got to chase him again.

1:16:42But you get results that way. Sometimes you just need that extra touch point. And so I would have that, you know, the fortune is in the follow-up going through my head every time I thought, no, they're not interested. I'm not going to send it because it's not my job to know whether or not they're not interested or whether it was just the wrong time or whether an extra nudge means they're going to get back to me. So that was really important, actually, I think. Yes, and I think that's something which a lot of people miss because, again, that fear of no, that fear of saying no, of getting someone replying back with some kind of expletive or someone saying, please never contact me again.

1:17:20It's hurtful. It's not nice. But you have to get to the point where you follow people respectfully because you are going to get a few Foxtrot Oscars and you're going to get a few people who say yes, okay. And I think just as a little story, when I had my property company, essentially we did sell and rent back. So we would buy people's houses who were getting repossessed. We'd buy them and rent it back to them on a hundred year lease. So we tried to be the most ethical way we could do it, but we were giving them 75 % of what the house was worth. That was what was in it for us. Then we gave them an option to buy it back and we tried to be as like, you know, whilst making sure we made money, we tried to be the best in the industry and we were the best in the industry for our offer, which brings us onto the offer in a second.

1:18:06But one of the things I used to do was every Monday I'd sit there and I'd print out, I wrote a bit of software that would essentially track where people were up to and they had seven letters that went in the post. So this database would essentially track who needed what letter and then it would print out a load of letters for me. I'd fold them, put them in envelopes, probably took me most of the morning, put them in envelopes, put them in the post. Knowing that if we're sending out a hundred of these a week, almost nothing happened. But then occasionally once a month, we get someone ringing up and going, yeah, okay, look, can we come around and chat to you?

1:18:38You saw us back in April. I thought I was back on top. I'm not. Can you come and we want to talk to you? And almost all of them said, the reason why I chose you is because you kept writing to me. Everybody else came down made me a low ball offer when i said no they took that you know they took their stuff and went off home and those were worth hundreds of thousands of pounds those those those letters because they brought in those people who everyone else had given up on yeah let's talk about the office stage or the the artistry stage in the patent pending al elliot business framework Yes, let's talk about one of my favorites.

1:19:46the uh the the group membership program and just before you go on i think it's sorry to interrupt but i think it's probably important just to attend just to establish when we say offer we're not talking about a special offer we're talking what we're going to actually go to market with what the actual product or service is going to be offering and i think it's just important because some people listen to go offers and that's their only concept is buy one get one free that's not what we're talking about here. Sorry, carry on. No, no, no, quite. That's really important. So then you brought to my attention the book,$100 million Offers, Alex Homozi.

1:20:23And one of the exercises he mentions in that book is going through all the problems and challenges that people mention and figuring out what would be the solutions that you could offer. And he encourages you to be as creative as possible, even to the point of ridiculousness. So if a challenge that someone has is they don't have time to go and shop healthily, then you could provide a personal shopping service. Clearly it's not scalable and it probably wouldn't work as a business idea, but he says, don't discount that. So from memory, that was kind of the next phase was going through that exercise.

1:21:08Is there anything you'd like to add to that? Plenty, plenty. First of all, go and buy Alex and Moses' book. I'm not on commission, obviously. Alex doesn't even think about me at all. But the book is phenomenal. And it just, it's nothing brand new. Sorry, Alex, there's nothing in there that's new. It just consolidates all the existing knowledge into A, as the first part of the story, which is cool. And B, he just puts it into a formula, which I wish I could remember. but essentially he's like, in fact, you know, I'm not going to spoil it. Go and look at the book and you'll see the formula about a third to two thirds of the way through.

1:21:42There's an entire chapter on this formula. Follow that and you will come up with a hundred million dollar offer. Guaranteed. What I think is cool about this though is you didn't just go, all right, this is my idea. Let's go through the book and let's craft it according to that, which you could have done. But what you've actually done is all these, what, probably 20 to 40 hours worth of conversations you've got with people that you've logged, you've transcribed, you've added in a chat to EPT to sort of analyze and whatever. They're all add-ons, like you've said. So you can look at it and go, right, well, my biggest problem, let's imagine the biggest problem is time.

1:22:18That's going to be the biggest problem for everyone. I haven't got time. You go, well, I can't really do too much about that. What we can do is we can have a time management course on this, or we can have a time management speaker coming in, or we can talk about, what about if we talked about the types of software that could be used? What happens if we actually went to a software house and we we've got a load of clients here, you write software, their problem is this, they're using Excel for this, why don't you create something and we'll sell it and I'll take a percentage of it. It opens up all these ideas but also what it does is it answers the question, what else could I A, sell or B, give away that would make this a no-brainer offer, make this something people would feel stupid saying no, which I think is Alex's actual terminology.

1:23:03and that's where this qualitative research is that right is that the right word or quantitative anyway asking people that's where that comes into it because you have all the answers you have all these transcripts these you know hundreds of hours or scores of hours of of where people have told you exactly what they want and exactly how your offer needs to look for them to go well i'd be stupid to say no and that's where i think the it all comes in with the whole scientist artist and then you go capitalist i think these the artist is so much better when you've spent that time being a scientist because you you have all the information and it's difficult to get and it's more exciting to go to the offer and create an offer but man you did it the right way and you did it beautifully and now even if this idea doesn't resonate as well as you think it does you still have enough data to go back and go right what will how do i tweak it oh do you know what's interesting a lot of people seem to say that this was a big problem like meeting other or talking to other accountants who deal with high net worth individuals that's a very small subset but if you have 80 of those people on in the uk in your database you suddenly become one of the most you know one of the most sought after people in the uk because you can connect dave with judy it does make sense yeah yeah so i think this kind of brings us up to date with where i am now so we're recording this just at the beginning of february 2025 where i've now started to go out into the world and say largely to people who i've already spoken to So following that conversation, this is where I've got to.

1:24:46And I'm still largely framing it in terms of what do you think? There's been a few people where I've said, I'd like to invite you to this, to be a beta member, become a member of the first group. And I still feel like I am in experimentation phase. So I've had, well, there have been people who have said yes, which I don't know why I should be surprised at that, but I was a bit. And I think what I'm looking to do is to see whether enough people say yes, that I can at least get the first group going. And that's also, I think, been quite important is to focus on the what's next because my mind has been expanding with all the ways that I could grow this.

1:25:34So multiple groups, groups aimed at different types of people at different levels of seniority, bringing in guest speakers, having annual dinners, offering extra things, which I don't know what they are yet. But there's all sorts of things that I could add on in the future. But one of the things that I've been saying is, yes, and that's all great. but the most important thing you do now is to get this first group together get six people maybe even four people four to six people who say yes i am prepared to be a guinea pig in your beta group and to try you out that's that's the thing that i'm now focusing on above all else and trying desperately not to get distracted by anything else Well, that seems like a really good point to start talking about sort of like lessons and stuff that we, that we've both learned from this process.

1:26:40So do you want to, I mean, if you were to summarize, because there's a lot to summarize there, we were speaking for an hour and 20, but if you were to summarize it, what, what's, what would you say were the top three lessons of someone listening that you've learned whilst you've been down this, this route? Number one, finding a niche. finding that focus so that was something that you said in one of our conversations when you have that niche and have that focus you know what you're going to do when you get up the following morning rather than getting to your desk and thinking well criker what am I going to do now because you've just got so many different ideas number two which again we touched on earlier for me definitely getting that help and support it's i can't tell you how much difference it's made i genuinely sort of you know count my lucky stars that you decided to take an interest in me i mean goodness knows what i would have been doing at this stage had we not started working together but it's it's something i keep i need to whenever i i don't know feel the resistance to oh I could just figure it out myself.

1:27:53I know that I really do need to get someone else involved. So that's probably the second most important lesson. What am I going to put in my number three slot? I think it's this idea of recognizing and acknowledging the discomfort. So even saying to myself, I am scared about doing this. I'm nervous about doing this. Having the awareness of that, but doing it anyway. I think that's also been an important awareness. So when I feel myself procrastinating, and I might even go to myself, Jeremy, you're procrastinating. Okay, you're going to allow yourself to procrastinate for the next 10 minutes and look at Twitter.

1:28:40But then after that, you are going to do this. It's having the awareness that once you get through that fear and do it, break that seal, that that's where the, you know, it's that old cliche about, you know, the comfort zone and where the growth happens. You genuinely do need to get out of the comfort zone in order to make that growth happen. And what I'm just going to add onto that is that there are ways to make that easier. I remember, crikey, it must have been 30 years ago going to the US and going to the Aerospace Museum on the Mall in Washington. And they had a great big cinematic thing about Air Force pilot training.

1:29:26And they said it takes so many hundreds of hours of air combat before you're basically good enough and basically likely to survive your first engagement. And the way they give you that experience is by doing a load of dummy exercises. They make it as close as possible, but they give you that experience through this training. And that's something that I have incorporated using AI. So like using the ChatGPT voice function, I have told it, I've told ChatGPT who I want it to be, and I have practiced some of these conversations. So like the first conversation, you know, these informational interviews where I was asking people their problems and challenges, I practiced that with ChatGPT first and just the act of doing it and actually saying it out loud and responding to what the AI was sending back to me was really, really valuable.

1:30:26And then again, I've practiced subsequent conversations. So just sort of doing that just to, you know, get used to hearing the sound of your own voice and doing something a bit different that's actually been really helpful in kind of breaking that fear so those are my top three lessons and i love this one about the about chat gpt i think what a lot of people probably not your listeners because they're probably already into chat gpt but bear in mind that we are a very small sub segment of the population who understand chat gpt and know how to make it work you know the majority of people have never even heard of it or they've heard of it and don't know what it is they think it's some computer in the sky the one thing that i think is people don't understand or don't use chat gpt properly enough for is exactly that treat them like a child or as my my business partner in the property thing rather unfairly says like a lawyer in that they are incredibly intelligent but you have to tell them specifically what to do because a lawyer is not their job is not to be creative Their job is to protect you and solve problems.

1:31:34And you need to tell them, right, this is exactly the scenario I'm trying to protect against. And the lawyer will be incredible. And go with all kinds of things you never would have thought of. But you can't just say, make me a contract. Because they'll be like, well, I need to know a lot more. Same with ChatGPT. I think that's the first thing is that don't expect them to be a magic box. They are incredibly, incredibly intelligent. But you have to tell them what you want. And secondly, there's something which you've done is you can create actual chats. and you can give custom instructions to say, right, you are now a customer, potential customer.

1:32:06You're a lawyer. You do this, you do this. I am going to pitch you on this and I want you to make the pitch difficult for me. And then use a voice and they'll push back with objections that you probably wouldn't have come up with and go, oh, bloody hell, how do I say that? How do I deal with that? But then that's the kind of thing which is really, I think chat GPT is incredible when you know how to use it and treat it like a very intelligent, but petulant child that will not do what it's what it's told until you very specifically tell it what it's told one cool thing i learned about i used to call it more than chat gpt now but is just to is just to reply to whatever they're giving you say this is great but you think you can do better what would you improve and general i mean i think you and i've talked about you may have even given me the phrase to do that and the resulting output is usually twice to three times as good yeah a friend of mine said something similar he he responds to almost everything with i don't think that's right try again and that seems to get results so those are my kind of three biggest takeaways i'm curious to know and slightly fearful of asking the question but curious to know what you've seen from the outside as we've been working together what's the kind of things where you've thought how should we put this things i've done well things i could do better things i need to do more of something yes something like that pick pick a framework whatever feels good for you i think what i really have liked seeing is you taking action on some of the difficult things because for most people the thing you put off is a thing that you really should be doing and whether that's exercising that's sales whether whatever the thing that you go i really don't want to do that is probably the most impactful thing and to begin with i felt that you were i didn't push you much because I didn't even know what relationship we had at the beginning.

1:33:52But then latterly, I did push you and go, this is the most important thing. And I could see your face going, I don't want to do this. But then you did it anyway. And that the first time you did that, that actually surprised me that you did it because I was expecting to come on the call. You went, yeah, I tried a couple of those emails didn't really work. So I've got a new idea. And you didn't. You went, no, I've done it. And that was fantastic. I think I've made a couple of notes as you were talking there um i think the second thing that i've really enjoyed watching your thinking develop and i mean being a coach i'm sure you come across jim roan if listeners haven't come across jim roan he's the guy who i think was tony robbins mentor and tony robbins learned everything from jim roan i think that's right please don't sue me tony if that's not right but he said something like in order to get what you want help others get what they want and that was something which you you almost innately had and that was cool when you were when you were sitting down you weren't going how do i make loads of money how do i sell this thing you were like okay how do i help people to live a better life and that was cool and i thought that was brilliant um the third thing which again almost might be jim rowan again um is that you are the sum of the five people you spend most time around and you recognize that and also what's interesting is that you've referenced it three or four times in this chat that you needed to be around people who are willing to push you a bit more it's the temptation is when you start a business to find someone who is like you and go right let's go into business together and in fact you should find someone who's completely opposite who you're going to argue with all the time because if they have the same skills you've got in the same outlook as you've got then you're you're only one part of an entire organ of of the of the trifecta you need to create a great business so i think there's that i think actually you were pushing for like yes i'm ready to talk to you now because i've done my work that was cool so i think for anyone who wants to who wants to have a great relationship where they're going to get lots of effort and success out of coaching the top three things that you've done well is come with a very open mind.

1:35:58When I talked about being a scientist, it clicked with you. Okay. Yep. Got it. All right. I'm not in love with my idea. I'm in love with helping people. Um, secondly, take action on that most, most unreasonable and uncomfortable thing that you need to do. Um, and thirdly, whether it's, whether it's just accountability, whether it's actually getting advice from someone like me, I don't know. I suspect that it's more the accountability than it is that my experience, I don't know but just be accountable to someone and whether that don't find someone who's like you a bit not like you generally but like you if you're a bit flaky don't find someone who's also flaky find someone who's actually going to go to you you didn't do that why not and then stop talking because then you have to justify all of the reasons why you didn't do what you said you were going to do which is very uncomfortable so that's kind of my thoughts on it yeah and I think learning humility is really important being able to accept you fortunately most of the people that i've worked with have you know they will usually say things in a nice way but it can it's it's still you know there's there's a point to this so you know there's a friend of mine who will say something like i say this with love but and then you you know you you know the fist is coming and And it's something that I've definitely had to work on is accepting that.

1:37:25And I mean, just for me personally, that was, I suppose, a bit of a challenge because, you know, historically, I was like, you know, the school swat, very academic, used to get things right. And so consequently, God, I could probably go back into childhood bit here. But, you know, criticism could feel hard, could feel uncomfortable. And so I wanted to avoid that. Whereas now I'm like, no, this is someone who's trying to help me. They've got valid points. I need to be open to that and to accept that. And it takes a lot of work, but I'm finding that that's a more successful mindset doing it that way.

1:38:08Totally agree. And I think it's interesting you saying that you were the SWAT, you were right. I kind of have yet another idea for a book in my head. be rich not right and I think the idea is I don't think you can be both I think you have to get it wrong a lot in order to make money because let's be honest if you're day trading 90 % of your trades won't work but the 10 % will more than account for those 90 % of losses I think I feel like I'm going to take charge here but I know we've only got a couple of seconds left but I do want to hear from you what you're most excited about for this this venture and maybe what you might be scared about I think it's two sides of the same coin.

1:38:48I'm excited about what it could look like if it does work and I'm scared that it won't. So it really is something that lands with me. so you know the idea of me being in groups facilitating groups doing a bit of group coaching maybe with all these people that i kind of you know i i know their backgrounds i i used to work with some of them creating this space and you know and if it works and people are getting a lot out of it and they want to renew and you know be part of it for another year and that kind of thing just the idea of creating that thing and it working really excites me i'd you know saying you know take a step back and go i can't believe that i've i've made this and people are loving it that the idea of that really excites me the idea of it failing and it not being the thing and then i know that i'm not going to go back to square one for the reasons that you said about the fact that I had these conversations with people.

1:39:53And so I've already got a lot of background information, but there is a big part of me that tries, I might not get invested in this idea. It is still a really cool idea that I really like. And so there's part of the, but what happens if it flops? What happens if it doesn't work? What the hell do I do then? What happens is that the end of that runway comes closer and closer. So that's probably the thing that I'm most scared of and i guess my way of dealing with that at the moment is just to keep going and see what happens i love that i love that and a very amazing honestly there i think the key thing i think the key the key takeaway i'd love if anyone listened to this entire well obviously people will listen to this but if there was one thing they were taking away from it is that what where i think you'll succeed is that you're still in scientist mode and you're not going to move to artist mode until you actually have a working hypothesis and the fact is that you say I'm worried that people are not going to like what I'm doing some of it they won't some of the some of the events you'll put on you'll do this and people go like why have you done that that's a waste of time I really don't like that but if you keep asking them how could I make it better what do you not like about today's session what did you love about today's session you're going to start to tease out all that stuff that people actually love and you double down on that and again it's the whole point is being rich not right you don't have to get it right first time you won't get it right first time.

1:41:16But if you expect you will, I think you're going to end up with being very disappointed and probably very poor. I've absolutely loved this conversation. So grateful for you, well, for everything that you've done, but also for coming on today. Give some people some links for where you'd like them to find you. Cool, yeah. I think the best thing to do is if you like this and you want a conversation with me, then go to chatwithal.com. I can book a call me. If you just want to help us and you'd support us then go and maybe just download a um download an episode of truth lies and try it out see what you think because we're very proud of it and we think it's great and we have some fabulous guests on it that would be the best way i think so truth lies and work.com or just search your podcast app for truth lies and work and i will emphasize that truth lies and work is a fantastic podcast um i think i've almost gone back through the entire back catalog and thoroughly enjoyed it.

1:42:11So it's been great. Al, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Al Elliott. Big shout out to Al, not just for coming on the podcast and being part of a conversation that I really enjoyed there, but for all the help that he's given me over the past few months. Something I would like to draw out from that conversation, which we didn't really touch on. Now I recognise that I have been incredibly lucky to have someone like Al giving up their time and helping me out with my own business. I absolutely meant what I said when I mentioned that I just couldn't believe my luck.

1:42:52Having said that, the opportunity wouldn't have arisen had I not met Al in the first place. The way I met Al was to invite him and his wife Leanne onto my podcast. At the end of the interview, I had some questions for them about the work that they did and how I could potentially get involved in that kind of work because it really did interest me. And so that then led to further conversations, which then eventually led to Al going, come on, let's take a look at your business. Opportunities arise when you put yourself out there. You don't necessarily know what's going to come from a particular relationship or a conversation.

1:43:30but you'll never know if you don't instigate it in the first place. I'm an introvert by nature and certainly to begin with and still to some extent I find it pretty tough to reach out to random strangers to ask their advice and when you don't get a reply it can be pretty disheartening but I've learned that when you do get that positive reply when someone goes yeah sure I'll have a conversation with you something is going to come out of it you'll learn something or that person will have another connection that they can introduce to you which might help you. Or you may have a connection for them that you can introduce to help them.

1:44:08We're kind of at this weird point where technology makes it both really easy to connect with people on the other side of the globe, but there seems to be less willingness to have conversations. And I mean conversations where you're talking to one another, not just exchanges of emails or exchanges of WhatsApp messages or whatever. For me, it's those interactions, whether on screen or in person, where magic really can happen. So if there's just one thing I'd like to leave you with, it's that. Look for those opportunities to have conversations. And I mean those conversations where you are opposite that person, whether on screen or in real life, in real time, talking to one another.

1:44:50I'll put the show notes for this episode on the website at changewithlife.com forward slash 200. That's changewithlife.com forward slash 200. And while it does sound a little bit strange saying that number, 200 does feel like quite a lot of episodes actually. And this one was a bit different. I mean, perhaps it was a bit more business focused, although I think there's an awful lot in there that you can also take into a work situation. When I'm coaching around job applications or interviews, it often comes up that people hire because they have a problem to solve. They've got work which needs doing and they don't have the capacity to do that work.

1:45:27So you are a potential solution to that expensive, painful problem. But what I'd really like to know from you is, what did you think of this episode? It was a bit different. Did you prefer the format? Do you prefer my usual interview format? Did you like the topic? Any and all feedback will be welcome. and you can send me a message using the contact form on my website at changeworklife.com forward slash contact. So thank you for making it this far. If this is the first episode you've listened to or if you're a regular listener, thank you for being part of my Journey to 200 podcast episodes. And guess what?

1:46:05I'm not stopping. There's more great interviews and great episodes coming your way. So if you haven't subscribed to the show, make sure you do because there's going to be another great interview in two weeks time and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye. That was Jeremy Klein on Change Work Live. Hopefully you found that useful, whether you're thinking about going out on your own or you're just nosy about what really goes on behind the scenes. It is rare to hear someone be that honest about that messy middle bit, isn't it? It's not just that I quit my job story or now I'm successful. It's the uncomfortable bits in between.

1:46:42and that's the humanity and the reality of it. Yeah, exactly. And massive thanks to Jeremy for letting us share his episode 200 with you. Lovely lot. If you want to hear more from Jeremy, and I recommend you do because he's got some brilliant guests on, you can find Change Work Life wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. Yeah, just search for Change Work Life. You know what to do. You put it in and it'll pop up. And you press play. Yeah, or you can go to our show now. It's below. Yeah. And there'll be a link and you just click on that. But you might as well just search for it. Anyway, have we said change work life enough, Leanne?

1:47:13Change work life. There you go. Okay, so we're back next week with part one of our listener highlights. And part two is a week today. So next week, you've just got listener highlights. And it's a really fun night. Leanne and I don't take it too seriously. And it's just a really fun kind of two-part show. It is. It is lots of highlights, including a listener's choice award for the guest of the year. And our most downloaded episode of 2025. So there's some big reveals. so go and enjoy and if we don't see you before Christmas have a good one yeah love to you and yours yes okay speak to you soon bye bye